Warning prickles the back of Daken’s neck the second he steps inside his room. As the door slides quietly shut, he tilts his head up to aim a smile at Mac lurking on the ceiling above it. “Hello. Forget which room is yours again?”

Mac’s alien eyes narrow. It’s fascinating to watch the symbiote twist to fit human facial expressions. Even with only half a face to work with Mac is surprisingly more expressive than most. Lester has the market on malicious, generally accompanied by disgust or glee, but Mac manages to pack a wary, hungry sort of angry hope all in the shape of his eyes.

“I see,” Daken says, unbuttoning his vest as he crosses to the bathroom. The whisper of Mac creeping along directly above his head brings a slow curl of satisfaction. Osborn’s grown lax on his iron throne. Mac may be as loyal as a dog but he’s a dog that must be fed. Osborn is never willing to give up a pound of his own flesh.

Cool water splashes into the sink as Mac crawls over the top of the doorframe. Daken wets his face and runs damp palms back over his hair. “Which is it tonight?”

Mac makes a noise tinged with the symbiote’s hunger. His tongue snakes out as he drops lightly down, body bulking up to fill the doorway. He’s slowly beginning to understand what the symbiote has always known. Unlike the games with Mac’s hookers, this one doesn’t end.

Lifting a brow, Daken puts a hand to his belt. An eager ripple goes through Mac and spills out in the symbiote’s thick cordite scent. His clawed grip splinters the heavy granite counter. He says, “I’m hungry,” like a plea, repeating it over and over as he prowls across the tile. Slivers of his humanity peel away with each piece of clothing Daken drops to the floor. He looms behind Daken in the mirror, big hands closing carefully over his arms, claws pricking along ink and tongue chasing after the water trickling down his neck.

The symbiote quivers as Daken sinks back against him. That same quiver finds its way into Daken’s belly as tendrils separate from Mac’s hands to flow thickly down to cover his arms, heavy as tar but smooth, slick. It tightens its hold slowly, drawing his arms back until his wrists meet, then his elbows, then tighter still, every inch gained perfectly timed. It possibly knows his body as well as it knows Mac’s by now, and he wonders at times why it hasn’t tried to bond with him. Either it prefers what he can do for Mac like this or–and most likely–it knows something he doesn’t. He tips his head back to look Mac in the face instead of the mirror. “Is this your way of telling me you’re feeling playful?”

Mac’s response is a slow curl of tongue up the centre of his chest, a tingle like rubbing alcohol evaporating from his skin in its wake. The shiver that follows isn’t faked. Neither is the soft moan that accompanies it. As practical a tool as sex is, there’s no reason to not enjoy it when the opportunity is there, and Mac is the most interesting fuck he’s ever had. Definitely the most interesting thing he’s ever controlled.

The symbiote stays clamped tightly around his arms, shifting with a fitful eagerness as Mac’s hands slide down to cup the backs of his bare thighs. He spreads his legs easily enough, not as desperate as Mac for the main event but certainly as willing. Keeping his claws sheathed as he’s lifted from the floor requires a bit more effort, Mac’s strange silence needling under his skin.

A quick swipe from the symbiote knocks the few bottles on the counter aside, a few tumbling into the sink as Mac grates a contrite noise, but he doesn’t stop until Daken’s settled onto the counter, balance precarious with his arms bound behind his back and his knees spread wide on either side of the sink. Thin ropy tendrils snake out to loop over his calves, thickening to anchor him in place as smaller pieces creep up over his knees, webbing out along his thighs like veins. He glances up from their progress to take in his reflection. The brush of the symbiote weaving across his belly is like walking through a spider’s web but firmer, strong enough to catch and hold. It flutters teasingly over his cock before pinning it. It’s provocative, full of a brutal sensuality. “Mac,” he says slowly, a fond, teasing lilt that he knows Mac doesn’t want to like, “you’ve been holding out on me.”

Crooked teeth scrape the tight bunch of Daken’s shoulder blades. The symbiote adjusts seamlessly as he bends forward, inviting the hot slick of Mac’s tongue to sweep lower. A slight shift in his scent would hurry this along but Mac hasn’t needed that extra nudge for weeks. He stretches his fingers out, tips barely grazing the curve of Mac’s cock still covered. He flexes his hands, encouraging them to let it free for him to jack, but instead of Mac’s dick pushing hotly between his palms it’s cotton-thin strands of the symbiote twining around his fingers. A flutter at the corner of his lips prompts him to open his mouth. He doesn’t expect the invitation to go ignored. Anticipation buzzes through his blood like little flies trapped in Mac’s webs. He’s honestly curious which one of them, symbiote or Mac, is calling the shots here. Neither has an impressive track record with delayed gratification.

“I realise you get confused sometimes but I promise, it’s very straight forward.” Daken strokes his thumbs over the symbiote quivering between his knuckles. It seems to enjoy the threat of his claws pushing up the beneath skin. “Fuck me or eat me, Mac.”

Mac’s joyful screech ricochets off the polished tiles. His hand clamps to Daken’s jaw, thumb and forefinger almost as large as his face, and wrenches his head back so quickly the symbiote surges to keep him anchored. A kiss wasn’t quite what Daken was expecting, and it isn’t quite what he gets either; without the teeth Mac’s lips are latex-slick, his tongue hot and thick as it pushes into Daken’s mouth, strangely textured, purely alien. As clearly as if it’d been spoken aloud it says the kiss was the symbiote’s idea. It’s genuine in a way Mac isn’t, eager to please. Simply eager in all things, as if its lust for life doesn’t stop at things made of flesh and blood.

His idea or not, Mac enjoys it just the same, grinding against Daken’s hands when the symbiote allows them to curl over his cock. The shape of Mac’s mouth shifts slowly while they’re still pressed tightly together, one type of monster sinking into another. Teeth pricking at Daken’s lips brings up a moan that Mac licks straight off his tongue. Good isn’t the right word for a kiss from Venom. Thrilling maybe, like staring down the barrel of a gun, standing at the edge of a cliff. A match in one hand and gasoline in the other.

Cooler air rushes in as Mac draws away, his tongue lengthening to keep the tip tracing along the slack line of Daken’s mouth, and a hot puff of breath forcing the chill away again as it flicks at his jaw, his ear, the slope of his throat before it wriggles bizarrely beneath the heavy fall of his hair. His gaze jumps back to the mirror to watch it wrap around his neck, thick coils shifting restlessly, glistening in the bright track of lights.

His stomach swoops south as the symbiote pulses. He doesn’t have the leverage to get free if it tries something this time. His control is best through Mac but even as drenched as he is in Daken’s power, it takes more time than the few seconds the symbiote would need to bond. Mac hisses a pleased noise in his ear as his heart rate climbs and the symbiote spreads like an oil slick into the gaps where his skin shows through its tendrils. It flows over and through the coils of Mac’s tongue, an endless shifting mottle until it reaches his face, stopping so close to his eyes it brushes his lashes when he looks down. The shadows make it impossible to tell where he ends and Mac begins.

One second drags into the next. It fits as closely as a second skin, alive and thrumming with power, pulsing in time to his speeding heart. It’s crawling with impatience, pricking straight through skin to graze raw nerves. The sensation is incredible on his cock, tightening his muscles as it drags on, his thighs beginning to shake.

“Gotta feed it.” Mac’s low chuckle at the jolt he gives when the pleasure peaks feels like dry sand whispering though his bones. “You make it hungry, you gotta feed us. You have to feed us. Feed us,” Mac repeats, the words slipping from the symbiote itself, stripped of humanity to leave it shrilly resonating. His claws join with and then sink through the symbiote covering Daken’s thighs, piercing the skin beneath. It barely registers over the tightening of Mac’s tongue around his throat until the symbiote penetrates the wounds, burning like gasoline through raw flesh. A scream lodges in Daken’s throat, caught on the breath he can’t draw. Mac chokes it to nothing as the symbiote wriggles deeper.

The steady build of pressure in his head fights the squeezing pressure in his chest. A lick of black at the corners of his vision makes him think the symbiote has crept across his eyes. He blinks it away and it comes crawling back, speckled with starbursts. Distant pain bursts along his arms; the tips of his claws skim through the symbiote as it parts, then crawls up their ragged edges through the split of his skin, up into his arms. The black surges up to blind him.

Mac makes a harsh cooing noise as a sliver of air trickles down his throat. He slumps in the symbiote’s hold, eyes squeezed tightly shut against a wave of lightheaded relief. The symbiote gives an interested twitch, rippling against his cock and Mac makes that same sound again, deeper in his throat. Through the pounding in his head Daken hears him say, “Smells so good, do it again,” and the symbiote presses slick and gentle to his hole, slides easily up inside him. It grows thicker as it rubs against his prostate, another jolt of too-sharp sensation followed by the slow spreading ache of it sinking further, splitting to twist like fingers. He slowly opens his eyes, not at all certain if it’ll be Mac or the black insides of the symbiote he’ll find.

“There he is,” Mac murmurs, the shape of his hands forming in the black coating Daken’s chest. They skim down like a wave beneath the surface to frame his dick as the symbiote fucks up into him, pulling him into a slow, rolling rhythm that turns Mac’s heavy breaths short. He doesn’t think before triggering a fresh spill of pheromones into the air. They never reach it, instead sinking directly into the symbiote. It jitters the same as if he’d taken a live wire to it and Mac lets loose with a grinding screech, savagely pounds into him.

He keeps his body lax, pliable, and Mac’s hold on his throat stays loose. The gentle shifting of their reflections doesn’t at all match the roil of sensation inside him. The vague suggestion of a hand strokes along his dick, a low-grade buzz next to the constant dig of the symbiote into wounds it won’t allow to heal. If they expect him to get off, this isn’t going to cut it, and that’s not how this goes. It always goes the way Daken wants.

Mac’s vicious grin scrapes from his neck to his shoulders. The symbiote’s steady thrum pitches higher, sounding more like an instrument out of tune than something alive. He feeds them another spill of pheromones and watches it shudder in violent glee. Mac’s rhythm changes immediately in response, a reward of real pleasure instead of being used simply for their own. An unsteady laugh leaks through the smile that bares his teeth at Mac’s reflection. They have learned something from him after all.

He gives it more of what it wants and Mac starts mumbling nonsense at him, praises that sound like pleas and demands for more, half-finished promises and a steady loop back to how good he is to them, how good they can be. It stinks like love and devotion, of hungry desperate obsession, and Daken moans for them, tilts his head back and licks at the slippery length of Mac’s tongue.

Black spills into his mouth. He jerks back, resisting the urge to try to scrape it off his tongue. He can’t hold back a flinch when it flows up over his nose and covers his eyes. His throat locks up on instinct to save the scrap of air left in his lungs. Mac laughs at him, that same grating laugh as always, but this time he hears it scraping the inside of his skull. There’s no air, no light, no scent except the endless suffocating outpour of all the things the symbiote wants and needs and will destroy worlds to give him. He can have everything they are as long as they can have this one little slice of him. It muffles the wretched sound that tries to push up out of his chest, forcing him to the peak of orgasm and holding him there twisting and writhing and unable to draw a breath until he simply gives up trying. Yes, echoes in his head, yes, yes and yes, and it isn’t really a word he’s hearing at all.

He comes back from the edge of nothing to the harsh glare of simulated light with Mac’s cheek pressed to his side and the symbiote receding like the tide. It lingers in gentle lover’s caresses, gradually slinking back to leave only Mac’s hands stroking long lines down his thighs, easily supporting most of his weight. The aches they’ve left behind are already fading.

Very calmly, Daken asks, “What did you do?”

His head darting back, Mac says, “I didn’t do anything. Didn’t even fuckin’ take a chunk outta you like I wanted.”